Marketing – NicheLabs, LLChttps://www.nichelabs.com
Just another Nichelabs websiteThu, 05 Jul 2018 19:47:49 +0000en-US
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1 Invite Your Customer Inside; The Benefits of Virtual Tourshttps://www.nichelabs.com/marketing/invite-your-customer-inside-the-benefits-of-virtual-tours/
Thu, 28 Jun 2018 12:49:12 +0000https://www.nichelabs.com/?p=2948We are all busy people these days; it’s a rarity for a customer to scout out a product or service by simply having a look around town. Besides word-of-mouth, how do we find the best pizza in town, someone to fix our broken smart-phone screen, or a marketing firm to get our businesses seen on […]

We are all busy people these days; it’s a rarity for a customer to scout out a product or service by simply having a look around town. Besides word-of-mouth, how do we find the best pizza in town, someone to fix our broken smart-phone screen, or a marketing firm to get our businesses seen on the web? Google tells us that consumers use mapping tools (like Google Maps) 44% of the time when they are searching for businesses. After they find you, they need a reason to learn more and request your services or products. The longer they engage with your site, the more likely they are to make an appointment, visit the store, or buy the product. A Google Street View Virtual Tour is an easy, low maintenance, one-time investment that lasts forever and can increase both web traffic and in-office/store visits.

Google Street View Virtual Tours are an addition to the Google Maps platform. Anyone with a physical location listed with Google My Business can integrate a tour into their listing. As one of the most high-impact marketing tools available, a virtual tour literally gives a potential customer the ability to move around inside your business, choosing what they want to see.

Meet Medicus IT, a leading Healthcare IT Support Provider serving the Southeast. NicheLabs gave Medicus IT the power to leverage Google Virtual Tour Technology and showcase their beautiful office in Alpharetta, GA.

What does the 3D tour tell us about Medicus IT?

The vibrancy of their office exudes the energy of their brand. Polished and professional, the space gives the correct impression that they are a successful business. Any website can go on boasting for paragraphs about how fantastic their product is or how long their client list is. Why not just SHOW the prospective customer the fruits of your labor and instill the confidence that you are an established, active business. The most powerful copywriting imaginable still could never produce the impact that we get from this virtual tour.

In order to take care of your customers, you must first take care of your employees. We are able to see the office lounge area, complete with comfy couch, pool table, and even a foosball table. Notice how it is right next to a mass of spacious cubicles; In fact, the whole office has an openness to it. Have you ever dealt with a company that seems like they don’t talk to each other at all? It’s hard to imagine that happening here! This Virtual Tour allows us to SEE that they promote an atmosphere of open communication and idea sharing, leaving less room for customer objectives to get lost in translation.

Notice the adorable “DADDY” drawing from an employee’s son or daughter. Clearly, you will not be dealing with “robots” if you call Medicus IT.

“Take a walk” down the hall and you will see the impressive lunch area. They clearly care about employee experience.

There are so many positive mental notes that the visitor can infer as they navigate through this 3D tour. The interest it creates quickly turns to interaction to see and know more. Click, Click, Click!

Google Virtual Street Tours Enhance Your Online Visibility

When it comes to online presence, it pays to look good, but it is important to understand that you are also aiming to impress Google’s algorithms. There are certain factors that Google looks at to determine whether your business is relevant to a community, including distance. What better way to show Google that you are a real and credible business than visual proof that you are where you say you are?

Beyond instant credibility, virtual tours help to boost your Local SEO, search engine rankings, and website traffic. The point of local SEO is to increase your visibility in your community.

After searching, “IT company near me,” the user may see a box on the right side with information about a local IT company such as hours of operation, phone number, address, and reviews. This box is called the Knowledge Panel. One of the sources that “influences” the Knowledge Panel is Google My Business. Google Street View Tours are a great way to optimize your Google My Business Page, improving your Local SEO. Google’s research indicated that 41% of the searches through mapping tools (mentioned earlier) resulted in site visits, and business listings with photos and virtual tours were twice as likely to generate interest.

More Interaction = Enhanced SEO

Click-through rate is another factor that tells Google whether you are important or not. It is a measurement of how successful an ad, post, campaign, or link is at capturing interest. It is calculated by dividing the number of clicks (interactions) by the number of impressions (views). Increase click-through rate by getting your users to interact! It only matters that you are found if users visit your site and stay there long enough to complete a desired action. If your content is boring, why would they stay? If you fail to give them a reason to look any further than your landing page or homepage, you will have a high bounce rate and a low click-through rate.

To improve click-through rate, you can embed video, photos, text, and links in the tour that, when clicked, will redirect the user to another landing page or part of your website that calls for an action. Ex. When the user views the reception desk or cash register, they see some sort of call to action, like a “Book an Appointment” or “Order Here” button that takes them straight to a reservation system or contact page.

Besides your My Google Business Page, how can you use your virtual tour?

Embed it in your website or feature it on a dedicated landing page

Imagine a tab in your website menu titled “See Inside.” The user sees a large, vivid, 3D tour pop up. There is a slim chance of them not clicking one of the arrows to move around and explore. Congratulations, you’ve just engaged your potential client by providing an interactive experience. Visitors will stay on your site longer and are more likely to hop from page to page.

Think of how many times you have clicked on a picture on Social Media to enlarge and get a better view. Posts are more enticing when they include a virtual tour that users can interact with to view from different perspectives.

Add audio, video, links, and info…

…to get even more clicks and redirect to more pages. Remember that click-through rate!

A Google Virtual Street Tour is a real “set it and forget it.” No campaign necessary. If you would like to invite your future customers in before they even leave home, contact NicheLabs to create your Google Virtual Street Tour today.

]]>Customer Testimonials to Reinforce Your Messagehttps://www.nichelabs.com/marketing/customer-testimonials-reinforce-message/
Mon, 08 May 2017 16:36:11 +0000https://www.nichelabs.com/?p=2813Customer testimonials are one of the best tools known to marketers for reaching new clients and customers. But effective testimonials don’t happen by accident. They happen because you have tied someone’s problem and your successful solution to your prospect’s pain. Testimonials have many subtle complexities, but they should all boil down to a personal example […]

Customer testimonials are one of the best tools known to marketers for reaching new clients and customers. But effective testimonials don’t happen by accident. They happen because you have tied someone’s problem and your successful solution to your prospect’s pain.

Testimonials have many subtle complexities, but they should all boil down to a personal example of your client or customer got the right solution from you. And while it’s their story about your solution, you need to make sure it’s the story you want prospects to see – a story that connects them to the product or service you want to provide. It’s the story that helps them envision their own successful outcome.

What should your process be to use customer testimonials effectively?

First, it’s matching them to your business goals and then to marketing messages that will support reaching those goals. What product or service do you want to sell, and who do you think will buy it?

Then, look at your customers’ or clients’ success stories. This is where you get into all those subtle complexities.

Whose problem represents a substantial community of people or companies you’re targeting? You can have more than one problem, but keep it focused on one or two problems with multiple success stories. That will enable you to better focus on the target you want to hit.

Who has a really good story to tell and can you make it universal to your focused target group? You want your prospects to see themselves in the story. They may have a similar problem or may be in a similar business.

What did your solution do? Did it have a financial benefit (especially for B2B)? Did it get rid of a major problem in somebody’s home? Did it satisfy a strong desire or impulse?

Can you tell the story through multiple media? Can you boil it down to three sentences: problem, solution, results for a website post? Can you add a picture for further personalization? Can you write an article for use on your website or in the news media? Can you produce a video testimonial? The more ways you can tell it, the merrier. Just maintain your focus on your business goal.

Good stories with focused messages can lead to good results. Stories with appeal can generate good leads from the people who see them. Good stories have a better chance to be forwarded to prospects or go viral through social media. Stories that hit key, focused messages have a better chance of winding up higher on searches.

This is where NicheLabs can help. As a digital marketing firm, we bring you the expertise of professional writers, designers, web developers and experts in social media marketing (SMM) and search engine optimization (SEO) who team up to develop and execute strategies to tell your customers’ stories to your prospects. We can complement your content with website updates and digital marketing campaigns, including email blasts and pay-per-click advertising. If you’d like to start a conversation now, we invite you to contact us at 888-978-9254, or by sending an email using our website contact form. We love to talk about marketing, best practices for SEO programs, brand messaging and content strategy.

]]>Blogging: Beyond Writing a Posthttps://www.nichelabs.com/marketing/blogging-beyond-writing-post/
Mon, 01 May 2017 13:27:53 +0000https://www.nichelabs.com/?p=2810We encourage clients to blog and post items to their website news pages on a regular basis. You can use blogs and news posts to keep your customers and clients up to date on information that helps them or entertains them and remind them about your products and/or services. Today’s websites and content management systems […]

We encourage clients to blog and post items to their website news pages on a regular basis. You can use blogs and news posts to keep your customers and clients up to date on information that helps them or entertains them and remind them about your products and/or services. Today’s websites and content management systems (CMS) make it easy to post items as often as you like. Your posts are automatically indexed, and when search-engine bots do their periodic sweeps of new content, you’ll show up and earn “credit” for new, fresh content.

But using your blog or news posts effectively goes beyond just writing and posting. You’re leaving a lot of search-engine capital on the table by not using search engine marketing (SEM) tools to increase your exposure to your marketing targets. According to a report from ShoutMeLoud, almost 60 to 70 percent of the traffic generated by top-notch blogs worldwide comes from search engines.

That number should tip you off to how important it is to maximize your chances for your blog to be found. Blogging and search engine pros know it’s critical to analyze keywords maximize search potential and build a good story around those words. We can never overemphasize that you need to combine the art of good story telling with the science of SEO. For the science part, we have a lot of tools we can use to direct a good story, and we have a team dedicated to staying up to date on those tools and applying them effectively on your behalf.

Still, we’re only halfway there.

At NicheLabs, we have the capability to help you with the art of developing content that gets you out ahead of your competitors. Our expertise includes:

Competitive reviews to see what others in your market are doing

Focusing your content on what readers want to see in relation to your messages

Blog/site design for visual attraction

Once your blog is ready to be published, we work to improve site performance by:

Developing contacts with bigger influencers/bloggers for cross-posting and collaboration

Naturally, raising your visibility is a function of the quality of your content, its relative value for your target market, and how hot your topic is for your target. Google looks at all of these factors when it grades your postings, and those grades affect your page rankings. But if you do your homework and get the right exposure, you could double, triple or quadruple your traffic, especially if you hit a hot topic and get it referenced by other bloggers or news sites.

As a full-service digital marketing agency, NicheLabs can help you get more mileage out of your blogging and news posts. Our process includes working with you to develop a content strategy, producing or editing your content and posting it on your website and all other places where you can stand out to attract more business. We can complement your content with website updates and digital marketing campaigns, including email blasts and pay-per-click advertising. If you’d like to start a conversation now, we invite you to contact us at 888-978-9254, or by sending an email using our website contact form. We love to talk about marketing, best practices for SEO programs, brand messaging and content strategy.

]]>Full-Service Gives Your Business Added Dimensionhttps://www.nichelabs.com/marketing/full-service-gives-business-added-dimension/
Fri, 27 Jan 2017 01:24:00 +0000https://www.nichelabs.com/?p=2678NicheLabs is an established digital marketing firm, and we believe that strong websites and SEO campaigns will play an even greater role in any business’ ability to inform customers about their offerings and conduct business transactions. Still, you need to have more tools in your marketing toolbox, and we’re pulling out a few more for […]

NicheLabs is an established digital marketing firm, and we believe that strong websites and SEO campaigns will play an even greater role in any business’ ability to inform customers about their offerings and conduct business transactions. Still, you need to have more tools in your marketing toolbox, and we’re pulling out a few more for ChlorKing, a worldwide innovator in saline-based sanitization systems for commercial swimming pools.

We’ve had a long relationship with ChlorKing, designing, developing, supporting and hosting their website. Last year, we teamed up with their traditional advertising agency to help them scale-up their outreach with a series of email blasts to their sales network and customers, and we launched a public relations campaign. The success of everyone’s combined efforts, including ChlorKing’s support, has moved us into a full-service relationship that coordinates their marketing communications efforts and makes all of marketing tools more effective.

What does full service look like? In this case, it’s a multi-faceted campaign. Our public relations program is designed to get news coverage in ChlorKing’s targeted markets through news releases and working with the editors of trade journals covering those markets to place feature articles about product installations and expertise articles to educate potential customers about the company’s technology.

The information used to generate news coverage will also be repurposed as website content to reinforce and expand the marketing messages. Links to news items are posted to the ChlorKing website, and white papers and “how to” videos can amplify points made in expertise articles. Customer-testimonial videos can strengthen connections forged through case histories of the installations.

Editorial coverage will increase the effectiveness of two other tools: SEO and advertising. As the publication of news and features – in paper and online – drive readers to the website for more information or to request a sales call, their rankings will improve in the search engines. We’ll also be able to deploy a broader array of analytical tools to see what people are looking at and how long they’re looking. That will help us fine tune SEO and website content to enhance our search engine marketing initiatives.

News coverage also generates credibility for the company and its products, and that will make advertising more effective. With every trade publication having an online component and with some publishing only online versions, we can reinforce the messages with advertising across multiple channels. In the full-service mode, that means NicheLabs will work with the firm’s traditional advertising agency to create web-enabled versions of print ads and increase ChlorKing’s advertising profile with pay-per-click, (PPC) advertising.

Our program will also include the launch of a new, responsive website, designed to work better across all computers and device platforms, and we’ll be able to continue their digital marketing program more effectively. The responsive website will also help SEO efforts as well.

If you believe your own marketing program can take on more dimensions, we urge you to contact us. We can help you design and deploy a program, monitor it on a monthly basis and make the changes required to maximize your exposure and keep you ahead of your competitors. If you’d like to start a conversation now, we invite you to contact us at 888-978-9254, or by sending an email using our website contact form. An expanded website, news coverage, advertising and a granular SEO program can help expand your universe. We love to talk about marketing, best practices for SEO programs, brand messaging and content strategy.

]]>Google Opens Door for More Reviewshttps://www.nichelabs.com/search-engine-optimization/google-opens-door-reviews/
Tue, 20 Sep 2016 14:00:03 +0000https://www.nichelabs.com/?p=2516Some good news from Google means you have to be good. The search engine giant has introduced Reviews from the web to local Knowledge Panels to go with its best-of lists and critic reviews features. Whether your site publishes editorial critic reviews, best-of places lists, or aggregates user ratings, this content can be featured in […]

The search engine giant has introduced Reviews from the web to local Knowledge Panels to go with its best-of lists and critic reviews features. Whether your site publishes editorial critic reviews, best-of places lists, or aggregates user ratings, this content can be featured in local Knowledge Panels when users are looking for places to go. For places such as restaurants and retailers, this can bring up a lot more information in a single search, and that can be a huge benefit for customers or potential customers who want to know about your business and find it – fast.

Available globally on mobile and desktop, Reviews from the web brings aggregated user ratings of up to three review sites to Knowledge Panels for local places across many verticals, including shops, restaurants, parks and more. To take advantage of this increased visibility, your site will need to implement review snippet markup and meet Google’s criteria. Some of them are technical points that need to be included in website development. Some of them are based on how you handle your content.

They include:

Make sure the reviews and ratings you mark up are readily available to users from the marked-up page. Users should be able to see immediately that the page has review or ratings content.

Provide review and/or rating information about a specific item, not about a category or a list of items. For a restaurant, for example, the rating or review should be about a specific menu item.

No reviews are shown for adult-related products or services.

A single-reviewer name needs to be valid.

Ratings that don’t use a 5-point scale. By default, Google assumes that your site uses a 5-point scale, where 5 is the best possible rating and 1 is the worst. If you use any other scale, you can mark up the best and worst ratings, and Google will scale that to the 5-star system used in rich snippets.

That will make your site’s user-generated composite ratings eligible for inclusion. You can add the Local Business markup to help Google match reviews to the right review subject and help grow your site’s coverage. In the U.S. on mobile and desktop, qualifying publishers can participate in the critic review feature in local Knowledge Panels. Critic reviews possess an editorial tone of voice and have an opinionated position on the local business, coming from an editor or on-the-ground expert.

At NicheLabs, we can provide more information on how to participate and help you set up your website to meet Google’s requirements. This will enable you to concentrate on keeping your business at its highest levels to generate the reviews that will attract more customers. Contact us at 888-978-9254, or send us an email using our website contact form. We love to talk about marketing, best practices for SEO programs, brand messaging and content strategy.

]]>Public Relations Broadens ChlorKing’s Exposurehttps://www.nichelabs.com/search-engine-optimization/public-relations-broadens-chlorkings-exposure/
Mon, 22 Aug 2016 14:00:36 +0000https://www.nichelabs.com/?p=2482ChlorKing, the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of on-site chlorine generation and salt chlorination systems, is no stranger to the world of marketing. The company has a substantial budget for trade-journal advertising, dealer support and trade show participation to reach the owners and operators of commercial swimming pools, spas and water parks. Their program regularly […]

ChlorKing, the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of on-site chlorine generation and salt chlorination systems, is no stranger to the world of marketing. The company has a substantial budget for trade-journal advertising, dealer support and trade show participation to reach the owners and operators of commercial swimming pools, spas and water parks. Their program regularly touches people who are known to them.

To reach “the great unknown,” NicheLabs placed three news releases in trade journals in the first half of 2016 to get in front of new sets of potential customers. The news releases not only got them in front of more eyeballs in different trade media, it gave them the opportunity to develop feature articles for more in-depth news coverage.

Having the news to tell is the key to getting coverage. ChlorKing announced a new series of salt chlorinators and an upgrade to on-site batch chlorine generators, providing product news, which is always of interest to trade news outlets. A third news release announced a new 60-month financing program. The news releases were written by NicheLabs and distributed to a list of editors we compiled.

By following up with editors to make sure we sent the releases to the right persons, we were able to open conversations that led to upcoming features and additional placements. They include a “Problem Solver” article on the economics and safety of on-site chlorine generators for Recreation Management and an article in Funworld about the company’s NEX-GEN equipment for water sanitization in water parks. We are working with editors at Aquatics International to discuss long-term capital budgets to position the company as experts in pool operations while showing the benefits of considering life-cycle costing for more durable equipment – which ChlorKing provides.

Having a PR specialist write and distribute the news releases and do the all-important follow-up helps maintain good relations with editors – who always seem to be on a deadline. When they know they can get high-resolution image files and answers to their questions when they need them, ChlorKing has a much better chance of telling its story effectively.

The news releases have also helped ChlorKing gain exposure in vertical markets, such as hotels, colleges and universities, municipal governments, property managers and other businesses that operate commercial pools. All are strong markets for the company’s products.

The PR effort ties into other aspects of marketing. The news releases were repackaged as e-blasts to ChlorKing’s dealer network and posted to the company’s website as a news item, which created a new page each time to provide fresh material for search engines to index.

If you’d like to expand your universe with news coverage, validate your customers’ context with your website, SEO program or other marketing activities, we invite you to contact us at 888-978-9254, or by sending us an email using our website contact form. We love to talk about marketing, best practices for SEO programs, brand messaging and content strategy.

]]>The Type of R&D That Small Businesses Can Really Usehttps://www.nichelabs.com/general/the-type-of-rd-that-small-businesses-can-really-use/
Tue, 08 Mar 2016 14:00:58 +0000https://www.nichelabs.com/?p=2365If you are looking to grow your business to find more clients, customers or patients without spending a fortune, then the tactic that my friend Steve Clements of The Medical Practice Resource Group uses is something you should consider. It applies to many parts of your business, including SEO. It’s the other R&D, not research […]

If you are looking to grow your business to find more clients, customers or patients without spending a fortune, then the tactic that my friend Steve Clements of The Medical Practice Resource Group uses is something you should consider. It applies to many parts of your business, including SEO.

It’s the other R&D, not research and development. Steve calls it, “Rob and Duplicate.”

Now that you’ve had a chuckle over how small/mid-sized businesses might do R&D, let’s take a look at how this applies. First, we are not suggesting or encouraging anything illegal or unethical, as the name “Rob and Duplicate” might imply. What we are suggesting is to make time to understand your competition, and if something is working, what you can you learn from it. Can you duplicate it in your own way?

This applies to product or service offerings as well as promotions, SEO tactics, Google AdWords campaigns, social media programs, and even email.

Before you spend much more on an SEO program or Google Adwords campaign, we recommend an analysis of your competitors. If you haven’t checked lately, as in the past 6 months, take a look around.

Learn what your leading competitors are doing. R&D. Does it make sense to follow the leader using tactics similar to them? That’s R&D. Or does it make sense to go around the flank, using tactics that they aren’t doing? Video can be a key flanking tactic, and so can creating content that is both interesting to your reader and interesting to Google’s algorithm.

We sometimes refer to this as “reverse engineering” a competitor’s marketing program.

Paid search: What keywords are they using? What offers? What’s on their landing page(s)?

Backlinks: Because backlinks are critical to currently successful SEO programs, are there sites that would also backlink to you — particularly the media? Are you purchasing ad media that will include a backlink to help your SEO program? Do you have a partner or vendor that they don’t have that can provide a backlink? It’s all fair within strong SEO programs.

Blogging: Are you sharing your quality blog content so that others will make reference to what you said, and link back to you?

The list of what you can learn by reverse engineering your competitors’ marketing can guide you to do R&D, go around the flank, or both. The team at NicheLabs invites your inquiry and conversation about the results of your R&D, or if you want us to gather the intel for you, and then create a go-forward plan. It’s what we enjoy doing. To speak with a NicheLabs professional, send us an email using our website contact form, or call us at 888.978.9254.

]]>It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time – Make Top SEO Agency Programs Accountablehttps://www.nichelabs.com/search-engine-optimization/it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time-make-top-seo-agency-programs-accountable/
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 12:16:37 +0000https://www.nichelabs.com/?p=2358You thought that an SEO campaign or a paid Search campaign like Google AdWords or Facebook was a good idea? You had business colleagues tell you it was working for them? You read something on one of your industry blogs or newsletters that an SEO campaign has become a necessity while traditional media effectiveness erodes? […]

You thought that an SEO campaign or a paid Search campaign like Google AdWords or Facebook was a good idea? You had business colleagues tell you it was working for them? You read something on one of your industry blogs or newsletters that an SEO campaign has become a necessity while traditional media effectiveness erodes?

So why are you having your doubts?

Talking with colleagues last week, it was fascinating how many businesses don’t have the results of their SEO programs — either because they don’t have reporting, or they don’t understand the reporting they receive. Terms like SERP, domain authority, CPC and CTR are confusing. Yes, digital marketing has a language different from traditional media’s TV, radio and newspaper impressions and reach (which are based on estimates from research sampling). Such terms are replaced by digital marketing or internet marketing’s overload of numbers — Google page ranking to the amount of time a visitor spent on your website, what pages they viewed, did they fill out a form. What type of website did they come from before viewing your site. Lots of data.

The key is to have the right data for your business. You want more customers, clients and patients. Period. The other measurements are details that your marketing person or marketing agency should deal with.

We agree. That’s why we direct all of our clients to use call tracking along with website form-fill tracking. Regardless of how many people viewed 3 or more pages on your website, you want the phone to ring and to do more business.

Chances are your phone system can do this. Our friend Paul Mancini has shown our clients that use ShoreTel phone systems that the reporting already exists; they just hadn’t understood how to use it.

Regardless of your phone system, any top SEO agency like NicheLabs can implement an inexpensive dynamic call tracking system so that you know how many calls to your office were from people who found you via Google, via a paid Search program or any number of unique advertising channels you want to track.

An added benefit is that the calls can be recorded for training or evaluation. And for our medical clients, the calls are stored and accessibility to the calls is HIPAA compliant.

Yes, you can know how to quantify, validate and verify that your digital marketing programs are working. As one of my favorite business advisors, W. Edwards Deming said, “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.”

While there’s hardcore data, much of which an SEO agency would use to update and modify its Search programs, there’s high level data that can be trended so that business owners know if what seemed like a good idea before truly is a good idea.

To speak with a NicheLabs professional, send us an email using our website contact form, or give us a call at 888.978.9254. We look forward to talking with you.

]]>Google Believes Humans are Unreliable, so Top SEO Agencies in Atlanta Know to Live by the 200+ Variable Algorithmhttps://www.nichelabs.com/search-engine-optimization/google-believes-human-are-unreliable-so-top-seo-agencies-in-atlanta-know-to-live-by-the-200-variable-algorithm/
Tue, 11 Aug 2015 14:00:01 +0000https://www.nichelabs.com/?p=2257As generating new clients and customers changes, we look for new or better answers everywhere. If you are looking for a top SEO advisor, Google’s co-founder Larry Page is one to listen to. Page said that having human beings determine the ratings of things was first, inherently impractical.. Further, humans were unreliable. Whether you are […]

As generating new clients and customers changes, we look for new or better answers everywhere. If you are looking for a top SEO advisor, Google’s co-founder Larry Page is one to listen to. Page said that having human beings determine the ratings of things was first, inherently impractical.. Further, humans were unreliable. Whether you are doing an SEO program, Google AdWords, social media or email programs, can you balance “humans are unreliable” while you know your buyers, your decision makers, are humans?

We continue to prove that the answer is yes, you can balance the algorithm-based SEO program with appealing to humans.

When top SEO agencies develop SEO or supporting programs, we know how to communicate for two audiences. You and Google. You for readability – knowledge transfer – and Google for SEO ranking.

Writing for humans should be more easily understood. Today’s readers value their time, so be to the point, and invite someone to “read more” if they are interested. When there were newspaper writers, they knew to write the most important item first, and then write in decreasing order of importance. If the editor ran out of space, the editor and the writer both knew which paragraphs to remove first. The same principle applies here. Before optimizing for SEO tactics, write concisely so that your reader knows it is worth their time and effort to read more.

Writing for Google’s SEO ranking is a different set of rules. Instead of the value of the content, it becomes the combination of 200+ variables that make up Google’s algorithm. It starts with optimizing the keywords for that page, which includes keyword density, keyword location, page title, tags, and image tags. Then it becomes optimizing the website so that your website visitors value your website, which Google measures by factors including how many pages they view, and how much time they stay on your site.

To Google’s credit, your SEO tactics now need to appeal to both humans and algorithms. If you don’t have an SEO specialist on your team, consider partnering with an agency like NicheLabs for coaching or consulting. While Google thinks humans are unreliable for SEO page ranking, humans are the ones reading and using the websites. NicheLabs is here to help you integrate SEO programs, social media, email and your offline tactics. We welcome a discussion with you. Email us using our website contact form, or call us at 888.978.9254.

]]>Post-Google’s Phantom2 Release*: If You Want a High ROI on Your SEO, Think Like Warren Buffethttps://www.nichelabs.com/strategy/post-googles-phantom2-release-if-you-want-a-high-roi-on-your-seo-think-like-warren-buffet/
Tue, 19 May 2015 14:00:17 +0000https://www.nichelabs.com/?p=2168While Warren Buffet doesn’t need SEO, his focus on ROI should apply to your SEO efforts as you develop your digital marketing strategy. Just as Warren Buffet – or his staff of analysts – develops a list of critical, long-term financial factors for every investment target, you need to develop a list of long-term factors […]

While Warren Buffet doesn’t need SEO, his focus on ROI should apply to your SEO efforts as you develop your digital marketing strategy.

Just as Warren Buffet – or his staff of analysts – develops a list of critical, long-term financial factors for every investment target, you need to develop a list of long-term factors that will determine your success in meeting your ROI targets for your SEO – and play to your strengths.

That’s our belief – and the advice from Jayson DeMers, an SEO blogger and guest lecturer in marketing at the University of Washington, who recently made the analogy in a blog post for Forbes. “Most business owners and marketers are happy to invest heavily in SEO when the outcomes can be reliably predicted and measured,” DeMers writes. “The problem is, as you may have already figured out, SEO doesn’t quite work this way.”

DeMers cites an article from late 2012 by SEO and Internet marketing consultant Sam McRoberts: Investing in SEO the Warren Buffett Way. Here’s the gist of it, according to DeMers: “SEO works very much like the stock market. You choose your stocks (keywords) based on the knowledge you have at hand, and then you wait. You’ll likely experience periods of growth and decline (like ranking fluctuations), but one thing is certain: the stock market and SEO are both long-term endeavors. There’s no quick path to riches in either case.

“However, over the long term, you can expect to see growth if you’re patient enough to stay the course through the ups and downs of the market (or rankings and algorithm fluctuations). Buffett said, ‘Over the long term, the stock market news will be good.’ Despite world wars, epidemics and the Great Depression, the long-term growth of stocks in the US grew steadily and significantly over the 20th century.” And it’s true with the all-to-recent Great Recession.

DeMers cautions that picking keywords – like picking stocks – is not like playing a lottery. Earning your ROI on SEO requires researching appropriate keywords based on potential traffic levels, competitiveness and the potential for conversions. That forms the foundation of your digital marketing strategy.

“A successful SEO campaign has great value; value which is, in fact, completely unparalleled,” he writes. “We know, for instance, that achieving the #1 spot for a given keyword means getting about 33% of the clicks. This means that if there are 5,000 searches for a keyword each month, you could reasonably expect to receive around 1650 visits to your site if you hold the top position. This is an outcome worth investing in heavily and waiting for.

“Savvy investors develop their own strategy (algorithm) for choosing their stocks,” he continues. “They’re essentially making a ‘best guess’ based on all the bits of information and knowledge they’ve accumulated. SEO works in a similar way.”

Using the tools, strategies and knowledge available to you, you or your agency gather information about the best keywords to target. Factors you’ll consider include:
• Potential traffic levels
• Competition for keywords
• Past performance of keywords
• Searcher intent (i.e. Are they just looking, or are they ready to buy, and when you want to get in the conversation with the searcher)
• Industry trends and predictions
• Expert opinions and advice

NicheLabs can help you develop a digital marketing strategy for SEO and ROI targets that meet your business goals. We are a full-service agency for businesses that don’t have a CMO or VP of Marketing or that don’t have the people or time to develop websites, manage SEO and digital/ direct marketing campaigns. As part of your team, we can create the channels for pushing out your content and work with you to get the information out to your targeted market.

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